Hope among both Jewish and Palestinian Israelis that a lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians can ever be achieved appears to be fading, according to two major new polls released here Thursday. A solid majority of 63 percent of Palestinian Israelis and a plurality of 47 percent of Jewish Israelis say they don’t believe …
Continue reading “New Poll Underlines Gloom Shrouding ‘Peace Process’”
JERUSALEM – As President Obama on Wednesday initiates the ninth U.S. attempt in the last 30 years to bring about a final Palestinian-Israeli peace agreement, expectations are low and pessimism is high. It’s precisely why the talks may just succeed. That, however, may be overly optimistic. Even if Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is genuine …
Continue reading “Middle East: Pessimistic About Peace, Yet…”
The Obama administration is eager to solve the Israeli-Palestinian problem – both to make the president seem less naïve for having believed he could broker the chronic dispute quickly and to lessen the motivation for radical Islamists that attack the United States in Afghanistan, Iraq, and elsewhere. The administration is even debating internally whether to …
Continue reading “Should US Be More Involved in Israeli-Palestinian ‘Peace Process’?”
JERUSALEM — In the absence of any progress towards peace between Israelis and Palestinians, leaders of the Palestinian Authority (PA) are adopting a reasonable approach as a way of building up international pressure on Israel to get it back to the negotiating table. Ghassan Khatib, an influential former PA cabinet minister and co-editor of the …
Continue reading “‘Israeli Settlements Killing Two-State Solution’”
The head of the U.N. commission that investigated the December-January Gaza war Thursday rejected assertions by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that any action to pursue the recommendations of his commission’s report could prove fatal to any renewed peace process with the Palestinians. "For the life of me, I don’t understand the reason for that …
Continue reading “Goldstone Rejects Netanyahu Remarks”
Eight months after Barack Obama launched his presidency by promising a speedy push for Palestinian-Israeli peace, that effort has stalled badly. And there are now growing fears that the top levels of Obama’s peace team are torn by internal disagreements that may undermine the whole peace effort. Some of these problems were on view during …
Continue reading “A Week of Dimming Mideast Peace Prospects”
Alan Bock on meddling in the Mideast ‘peace process’
Helena Cobban on Monday’s Obama-Netanyahu meeting
LONDON — Last month in Prague, President Barack Obama vowed that he would seek a world without nuclear weapons. On Tuesday, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Rose Gottemoeller spelled out that this policy would apply to Israel, as well. Speaking at a conference on the 1970 Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), Gottemoeller said that "Universal adherence …
Continue reading “Obama Aide Puts Israel’s Nukes in the Diplomatic Mix”
JERUSALEM — How genuine is Israel’s new leadership about peace when the Prime Minister says that he will go a long way towards striving for a settlement with the Palestinians, but purposefully omits to endorse an independent Palestinian state; and, when his foreign minister warns, "If you want peace, prepare for war," a blunt statement …
Continue reading “All Unclear Over Israeli Policy” 
